2009

"Harold. You look awful."

Finch turned toward Nathan's voice, pulling his gaze away from the computer and its blinking cursor. Eyeing his friend's bandaged hand, just long enough to make a point.

He turned his attention back to the screen. "I might say the same." His words were directed at the monitor, his tone absent. "Late night?"

"Something like that."

Finch hummed a noncommittal reply.

Nathan rolled a chair up to the desk, straddling it backward with his elbows on its backrest. His next words took on a teasing tone. "How goes the lessons in morality, mama bird?"

Finch twisted his neck, giving Nathan a sour look. "Fine, thank you."

"My offer still stands."

"My answer still remains."

Nathan smirked. Amused. This iteration, it was the furthest they had gotten. He knew his friend was carefully calculating each step in the Machine's development, its learning.

Its ethics.

"Have you slept?" Nathan asked. He waited, hardly a second, then directed the question over Finch's head. "Has admin slept?"

A pause. The blinking cursor.

Then, a response: Three hours. Seventeen minutes.

Nathan looked back to Finch, who gave him an irritated look.

"Nathan. Really?"

From the street, a distant siren howled. "Look, my friend, let's get you out tonight. Grab dinner. A drink."

Finch leaned back in his chair, swiveling away from the computer station, just slightly.

"C'mon…" Nathan's cajoling tone, a smile. "One night. The poor thing needs a break."

Finch found himself fighting back a smile of his own. "Alright," he said, chuckling. "Alright. Fine."

Nathan gave a triumphant grin. He looked down at his watch, then back to Finch. "Board meeting in six minutes." Raising his eyebrows. "I don't suppose you have any interest-"

"Nathan."

"Okay. Tonight." Nathan pulled his lanky frame up from the chair. Pushing it to the side, its cushioned arm hitting the side of the desk. "Seven o'clock sharp."

"Seven it is," Finch replied. He shook his head, smile lingering, and then swiveled back to face the computer screen.

He waited a moment. Thinking. Then let out a breath and began again.

"There's a runaway trolley..."


Finch woke with a quick intake of breath. Slowly lifting his head, heeding to the stiffness in his vertebrae.

He heard Reese, an amused, "Morning, Finch," and turned his head toward the voice, neck instantly disagreeing with the motion. Squinting into the pale cast of light from the windows, wincing at the subsequent spasm down his spine.

He shouldn't have fallen asleep at his desk.

"Mr. Reese."

"You look awful, Harold." Reese cocked his head. "You shouldn't sleep at your desk."

Finch gave the younger man a mildly irritated look, then rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. Awful were Reese's own shadowed eyes. The bruise now blossoming along his temple.

He gave Reese a critical assessment of his own: the slight sheen to the brow, a slowed breathing pattern.

Tells he had learned to read.

Bear pushed into Finch's personal space as he noted next the styrofoam coffee cup in Reese's hand (resting on a splayed knee with precarious tilt). A second beverage was to the left of his own keyboard. Tea. Probably cold.

Reese must have seen his expression change. "Bear wanted donuts," he offered.

Bear whined softly, pushing his nose into Finch's hand.

Finch absently rubbed the top of the canine's head. "Even he knows you're lying."

"Niet leuk, mijn vriend," Reese said to the dog softly. His coffee cup tilted but he corrected it in time. Catching Finch's eye.

Finch held out his hand. Palm up. Opening it and closing it once. Give it here.

Reese ignored him. Bringing the cup to his lips. He didn't drink.

Finch turned his chair from the desk and leaned back into its support. His spine argued the straightening, but he kept a mild expression. They were almost knee to knee. "And where might the donuts be?"

Reese blinked. The cup lowered back down. "The donuts," he repeated.

"For Bear?"

Bear tilted his head at the sound of his name and looked to Finch, ears perked, opening his mouth in a contented pant. Finch gave him a gentle scratch behind his left ear.

Reese's own head tilted, blue eyes squinting slightly in confusion.

"Donuts," he repeated again.

Finch frowned. He wondered if the guy at their normal beverage spot had taken Reese for inebriated that morning.

"You're annoyed," Reese guessed, after a long pause where he realized that Finch might be expecting him to say something.

Finch didn't respond. His frown lingered.

"I can go get donuts."

"John," Finch said. He let out an audible exhale. "Forget the donuts."

Reese was quiet. He rubbed his free hand down the stubble on his cheek, across his chin. There was a rattling noise from the street, a truck making its morning deliveries.

The coffee tilted again, and Finch reached out without an offer this time, removing the lukewarm styrofoam from the unbalanced hold.

Reese stared at that cup for a minute, at its new resting spot next to the other on the desk, and Finch waited, watching him. For a moment, he debated.

He had spent half the night digging up what he could on the tech company Ms. Shaw had managed to get the name of. Breaking through the firewall had been a challenging but not altogether impossible task.

It had been a welcome distraction, but nonetheless, the second half of the night was spent bothered by Reese's slip of events from the day before.

"Mr. Reese."

Reese's eyes went back to him. A practiced calm in his expression.

Finch paused. He wondered if they trained that. Basic? Special ops? Ms. Shaw often housed a similar expression, but hers tended more on the side of undefinable annoyance.

Mr. Reese's expression harbored nothing. It was vacant. Empty.

He shook his head.

"Finch?"

Yesterday.

He couldn't get it off his mind.

"Yesterday..." A beat. "Mr. Reese. I fail to recognize what would ever possess you to leap from a window."

Reese blinked, mildly, and then rolled his eyes with a soft smile. As if to say, That's all?

The blankness was gone. Snapped away.

"Finch." Patiently.

"I'm serious."

"Finch."

Finch heard only the nonchalance (could already hear the argument: Do you know how many windows I've jumped out of, Harold?) and headed it off with a sharp look.

"You're not invincible, Mr. Reese."

The resulting sound from Reese was something between a scoff and a laugh. The ex-op raised his gaze to the ceiling, closing his eyes with a slight shake of his head.

When he opened them, he met Finch's stare with a wistful half smile.

"If anyone knows that," he started softly, "it's me." A splayed knee rocked slightly: he didn't like the conversation's direction. "I thought you trusted your machine, Harold."

Redirection.

"You can't blindly follow a machine, John."

Reese raised his eyebrows. He almost looked amused. "Finch."

"You had another exit."

"Did I? I'm sorry, Finch, I forgot you were up there with me."

It was a cheap shot, said too quickly.

Finch stared at him.

Reese was quiet.

The agitated rocking of the knee returned.

A rattle of the gate, an eager whine escaping Bear. Neither looked to the doorway.

"This," Reese said, and he waved absently at his head as the dog ran off to greet Shaw, "had nothing to do with that."

"Hardly the point."

The clicking of Bear's nails, the scratching of excited paws on the wood floor.

Reese looked away from his employer's frown. "Speaking of doctors," he said.

Shaw flicked his ear at the comment, circling around the desk like a restless cat. She landed him an unamused glare. A stony frown.

She hated any reference to her medical career.

He knew this.

She looked to Finch instead. The glare still present. How do you put up with him?

"Good morning, Ms. Shaw," Finch said flatly. He swiveled his chair back to the computer station.

She looked between them, sensing the tension. To the styrofoam cups next to the keyboard.

She leaned against the desk. Reaching for the cup with coffee. She sipped it, then looked back to Reese. To Finch.

To Bear.

"Where are the donuts?"


From Finch's earlier hack and his current post in a nondescript white van on the corner, access inside the fifteen story building that housed the technology firm Initech seemed to be straightforward.

Shaw and Reese presented their freshly printed and laminated ID badges, swiping through the outer turnstiles and shuffling through with the morning crowd toward the inner atrium.

Just another workday, herded through with their fellow sheep in suits.

Then, one not so straightforward detail: after the turnstiles, metal detectors.

Shaw hesitated, eyes sweeping the atrium behind the security wall: access to stairwells and elevators.

The only access.

She muttered a curse.

"Finch," she started. She thought he could maybe access the firmware to the detectors. Turn them off.

Something.

She glanced at her watch.

Twenty minutes until the meeting time indicated in a recent text message from the second Ivanov brother. Its recipient, unknown. Presumably an Initech employee.

Reese had circled away from her, his own eyes sweeping the atrium, but in a way where it seemed he was admiring the grandiose marble fountain at its center and the intricate glass ceiling.

Eyes upward, still walking.

He bumped into a custodian.

He murmured an absent apology, catching his balance. Shaw shot him an irritated look.

"You should have stayed in the van," she said when he was near again.

He ignored her, staring at the ceiling a second longer. He blinked.

She shook her head.

"C'mon," he murmured, moving to the side of the passageway.

Shaw watched him. She trailed behind, still examining the hall for any weaknesses.

"I'd prefer," she continued in a low voice, "if my back-up wasn't the one who shot me today."

"I can see fine." It was a lie: his vision was haloed in darkness, the marble fountain had appeared in double. He pressed a smile at her. "But I can't make any promises."

She shot him a look.

They were at a door now, at the corner of the hall. A security camera at the other end; they both shifted their stance to face away from it, almost in sync.

Shaw looked at the door.

Okay?

A jingle.

She turned.

Reese held up a ring of keys: standard keys, swipe cards, key fobs.

You name it.

A whisper. "You still want me in the van?"

"Yes," she muttered, but she grabbed it from him and went to work on the lock.


A/N: First to admit: it's been tough to write. Began a post-series denial piece, which may never air, then came back to this. Thanks for sticking with me. :)